Fight or Flight

I gave Tristan the same talk Jake gave me, and at the end he said I sounded an awful lot like Jake.  That made my night. :)

There are two types of people in this world: those who, upon colliding with a wall, walk away in disappointment, and those who throw a grappling hook over the edge and climb.  Jake taught me to not only have a grappling hook on hand at all times, but also have a good arsenal of weapons to take down any opposition and for pete's sake, remember to clear the area before advancing.

Tristan is walking the fine line between being cautious and being paranoid.  I told him what Jake told me: You can't live your life looking over your shoulder, worry about the what-ifs and maybes.  You'll miss out on wayyyyy too much!

Yeah, maybe we're being constantly watched (okay that's not a maybe, that's a definitely), maybe we're being hunted, maybe we're being listened to and tracked and conspired against.... But you know what else?  We're definitely alive, we certainly know how to defend ourselves and I for one refuse to live in a corner of a padded room just because things that go bump in the night give me the heeby-jeebies.  My mother taught me when I was a little girl, and honed it in to adulthood, that it doesn't matter if there are monsters in the closet or under the bed or hiding in my toys, what matters is what I'm going to do about it.  Most kids hide behind the covers while their moms show them nothing bad exists.  I sat up and stared it down while my mom taught me how to fight back and chase them away.

Jake was my trainer, and although I was the worst possible student any trainer could ever have, he was successful in more than he probably thought.  I suck at classroom performances, and that was apparent in our training sessions.  I complained, I slowed us up, I refused to follow orders, and just overall made every last minute a pain in his kertoosh.  And then we got to the hand-to-hand combat section, and instead of teaching me moves he came at me with his own.  Surprisingly to both of us, I blocked, parried and dodged like I'd been at this for years.  Now I'm not going to say I'm the next Chuck Norris, but Goran instinctive foresight helps a TON in combat situations.  That and my past experiences with self-trained kickboxing.  Yeah, I have to be honest, I WAS at it for a couple of years.  I just didn't stress that to him.

But he taught me so much more than how to fight, how to build shelters, how to distill water, etc.  Jake taught me how to live my life with the knowledge of and despite of the fact that people want me dead.  He never told me half the stuff that really went on because had I known, I would have freaked.  Even finding out years after the fact that a few shootings have been because of my existence has shaken me, and sometimes I wish I could take it all on to spare the innocent civilians the pain.  But my caution also saved so many lives, and balancing between caution and paranoia is a difficult but doable and necessary skill.  Be aware that someone is following and watching, but keep moving forward.  Just make sure your knife is tucked away close so any would-be attackers wisen up before doing anything stupid.

I need to go to bed so I can get up early to take his Royal Highness to work on time.  Yes, even hunted-down intergalactic royalty has to rise with the dawn to work a cash register.